Every comic you've read in 2014

[Venneh]

Queen and Country Essential Volume 2: And once again Rucka nails it with the eerily accurate depiction of things he doesn't know is yet to come, and with the emotional trauma. Lots of deaths this volume, and as you alternate them with chapters designed to get you even closer to the characters, everything hurts so bad. And yet, where the volume ends, it looks to get even worse. Can't wait for the next dose of pain!

Hawkeye 11-19: Let's just get this out of the way now. If you haven't already read 11 and 19 (aka the pizza dog and sign language issues), go do that now. There's almost no dialogue in either of these, which means that Aja has to step up and make the art sing, and by god he does. Most of the issues alternate between Kate and Clint, and I'll admit to being more partial to Kate's stuff, though Clint's stuff post Kate leaving is also pretty damn good,

Sex Criminals 7: Featuring an Iron Throne of dildos, nonsexual Twister, and a fight with dildo staffs and various s+m implements. Oh, along with a friendship reformed, secrets revealed, and Jon's self destructive streak going even further. Also, possibly the best letters page (including advice from a sex educator!) ever.

Fear Itself 1-7.3 what feels like the formulaic Big Marvel Event (which was starting when I got back into comics). Thor dies (and at this stage I'm like 99% sure this is happening once a year at this rate), Odin and Tony have some real interesting interactions, and as it turns out, he bulk of the interesting stuff mostly happens in the tie-ins. The main books feels like a cliff notes version of what's really going on. But, neat concept with Sin, Skadi, the Serpent, and all the Hammers. (insert hammer time joke here).

AvX 1-12: again, another Big Marvel Event, but with stuff I'm actually interested in. The PENIS force is always amusing, especially since most of it focuses on Scott and Emma's self destructions, seeing how the AvX loyalties pan out, and how people interact with and deal with Hope and Wanda is the real focus of this. Oh, and undoing the No More Mutants status quo (which had stood for what, six years at this point?). A really fun read overall.

Journey Into Mystery 622-645: One of the comics that really got me back into comics back in 11, and turns out it was Gillen before I even knew the name, really. Pretty sure I reviewed 625 for IIWY back in the day. Gillen manages to take what I'm sure we're several editor mandated tie ins and his own material and spin it all into one overarching g coherent narrative that's amazing to watch unfold, especially as you're watching Loki sliver tongue his way through the Nine Realms, and Leah being his ever reluctant companion. What happens to Leah is basically made of pain, bit amazing. Art can be a it all,over the place what with the constant switching, but is still usually quite good. Also includes Thori the hell-pup, Santa Volstagg, the uncouth humans of the internet, and several other misleadingly light bits, I think the fully collected volume (which includes the tie ins and stuff necessary to understand it) is due out soon; get it if you can.

[Dan]

as it turns out, he bulk of the interesting stuff mostly happens in the tie-ins.

A true Marvel event, then.

[Venneh]

Civil War 1-7: On the other hand, all you have to read is this, and you understand just fine what's going on. Civil War seems to inform/underlay a lot of the current gen's stories/status quos, and I'm honestly wondering why everyone hasn't just launched Reed and/or Stark into the sun yet after all this. Holy shit, some of this was real fucked up. I was told this was integral reading, and it pretty much is.

[Dan]

Civil War 1-7: On the other hand, all you have to read is this, and you understand just fine what's going on. Civil War seems to inform/underlay a lot of the current gen's stories/status quos, and I'm honestly wondering why everyone hasn't just launched Reed and/or Stark into the sun yet after all this. Holy shit, some of this was real fucked up. I was told this was integral reading, and it pretty much is.

Civil War was an interesting story that required Reed and Tony to become gigantic assholes overnight in order for it to work, and that was frustrating, especially since it coincided with Marvel essentially becoming Iron Man Comics Group when the first movie came out. However, pretty much everything that followed was directly impacted, and even now, several years later, the after-effects are being felt.

[Venneh]

Also, Hill. Like, I don't know a lot about her in the 616 verse, but holy shit what the fuck happened to her? Did superheroes violently murder her parents in front of her? (Also hi I've had 3 mint absinthe schnapp lemonades tonight)

[Dan]

Nah, she's just kind of a pill.

[KnightWing]

Hill gets more likable later on, especially during the Dark Reign stuff. Once all the "good guys" are on the same side and everything.

[Dan]

Hill gets more likable later on, especially during the Dark Reign stuff. Once all the "good guys" are on the same side and everything.

Early on her role was pretty much to not be Nick Fury, and making us want Nick Fury to come back was a major part of her job description.

[KnightWing]

Yeah, and being the right hand woman to then-supervillain Tony Stark didn't help either.

[Mad Man with a Box]

I just finished up Injustice Vol 2.

WOW! I mean I'm new to this whole comic reading thing but I think this series has been excellent so far. The focus isn't on action as one might expect but there's some really good characterization going on in the story. Seeing Superman's slide to basically the dark side has been well done. There are some great scenes which I'll put in spoilers just in case people don't know them.

Some of the best scenes are when Clark and both the Kents and a holographic Jor-El are trying to talk him down. This is right after an enraged Superman kills Green Arrow. Also good was the Batman-Superman encounter. Really good stuff there between the two.

Anyway trying to decide if I wait for Vol 3. or start buying the individual issues. I'm real interested in seeing where things go.

[Dread]

The Fox vol 1: Freak Magnet: For a trade paperback collecting only 5 issues of a superhero comic, this took me far too long to read. That's because it isn't very interesting or good. Waid only does the dialogue here, but Haspiel's plot and art is interminable. Not only will I not be buying volume two, I will not be reading any more of Dean Haspiel's stuff.

Trades: 44

Comics: 5619

Omnibus: 7

Graphic Novels: 15

[Dan]

Spider-Man: The Death of Jean DeWolff: collects Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #107-110 and The Spectacular Spider-Man #134-136. DeWolff was a captain in the NYPD, a longtime supporting cast member who was pure, two-fisted awesome, and by recognizing that Spidey was a valuable asset who made the police's job a hell of a lot easier and did a lot of genuine good for the city, she normalized Spider-Man's relationship with the city's police. When she was killed in her apartment in 1985, it kicked off one of the best Spider-Man stories you're ever going to read. The first four issues collected, written by Peter David with art by Rich Buckler, are absolutely terrific. Spectacular was always a somewhat darker book than Amazing in the 1980s, but this story was downright grim in a very real sense of the word. The story opens after DeWolff's murder, and the fact that this strong, admired, fan favorite character is dispatched offscreen is truly jarring. It's a Women In Refrigerators moment, unfortunately, but it's still an emotional gutpunch that sends Peter over the edge. Jean is the first victim of the Sin-Eater, a religious lunatic who begins a campaign of terror and murder that sends Peter into some truly dark places. it's a classic story that more than justifies that rarity of rarities in the Jim Shooter era, four parts. And on top of all this, Robbie Robertson gets a Crowning Moment of Badass that makes me remember why he's so fucking awesome.

The following three issues pick up the story two years later, and they're a disappointment. David is still the writer, but the artwork has been taken over by Sal Buscema, here towards the beginning of a 100-issue run on Spectacular. Our Pal Sal was a workhorse at Marvel for decades, and his work was always solid but uninspired. He's not helped here by being inked by Vince Coletta, arguably the shittiest, laziest inker in the history of comics who was perfectly capable of ruining much, much better penciling work. However, the issues in question aren't just lackluster because of the art; the Sin-Eater has gone from being fascinating, twisted and creepy as hell to being a crazy guy with a shotgun. Also, Electro is here for some reason.

Those first four issues, however, are must-reads.

[Koete]

I don't think there's a question that Vince gets the trophy for all-time shittiest inker, but for Sal specifically, Bill Sienkiewicz fucked him over pretty royally in the 90s.

[Dan]

I don't think there's a question that Vince gets the trophy for all-time shittiest inker, but for Sal specifically, Bill Sienkiewicz fucked him over pretty royally in the 90s.

You're not wrong, but that was really more a case of two artists whose styles could not possibly have been more different, and Sienkiewicz is just overpowering.

Truly, Sal's inks have the same problem. No matter who he's inking, it always comes out looking like Sal.

[Dread]

Infinity Omnibus- the whole shebang, well except for all of the tie-ins. I feel like this was 400 pages of story told in 1000+ pages. Hickman's hold on the various teams of Avengers is pretty great though. Great art all around.

Avengers: Prelude to Infinity vol 3- I wish I never read this bbefore the omnibus because almost all of it is covered in the omnibus.

Grimm Fairy Tales volume 1: Yes, it could be seen as just cheesecake, but I adore the recreations of the original nasty fairy tales. I'm not a fan of the modern framing sequences, but I do see that it is sort of going somewhere.

Trades: 46

Comics: 5619

Omnibus: 8

Graphic Novels: 15

[Dan]

X-Men: Phoenix Rising: collects Avengers #263, Fantastic Four #286, and X-Factor #1, plus material from Classic X-Men #8 and #43. Reprints the story of the rebirth of Jean Grey, a few years after she "died" at the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga. (It's kind of amazing to thing she had only been dead for a few years before coming back; she's been dead far, far longer this time around.) First off, the Avengers find the cocoon left by the Phoenix Force at the bottom of Jamaica Bay (while trying to integrate Namor onto the team, which is not going smoothly). Then, Reed Richards is on hand to help wake Jean up and then reintegrate her into the land of the living. Finally, the original X-Men come back together after having decided to retire as soon as they find out Jean is once again a going concern.

It's amazing; this would be a gigantic year-long event today. In 1985 it merited an issue each in two ongoing books before launching a new title. The Avengers issue is pretty decent; this was when Roger Stern and John Buscema were the creative team, and although the team was not the most classic roster they ever had (Cap, Wasp, Black Knight, Hercules, the Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel and Namor), it's well written and has a ton of characterization, which is good when you consider that the plot is "Hey, we found a cocoon". The FF issue was written and drawn by John Byrne at a point when not a lot of people were saying "no" to him any more, and the artwork is not even close to his best (Terry Austin is billed as his inker, but it really looks like his own work). It's 30 pages (no ads) of getting Jean out of the cocoon and making sure she's ready to go be in X-Factor. The explanation for what happened (presented to Marvel by Kurt Busiek) is old hat now, but for the time it was a pretty amazing way to explain how they could undo something pretty much undoable. It feels pretty workmanlike, though.

X-Factor... man. Chris Claremont tried so damned hard to give Scott Summers a happy ending. After losing the love of his life, he retired, met someone, got married, started a family, and went off to be a grownup and live a normal life. And now that Marvel decided they had to have Jean back, Scott turns into the guy who abandons his wife and baby in Alaska so he can go play superhero with his ex. Nearly thirty years of "Cyclops is such an asshole" starts right here in this issue. And to be sure, Scott is a gigantic asshole here (and would remain one for at least a year of X-Factor issues, and pretty much until Maddie died in Inferno). At the same time, Angel, Beast and Iceman are reeling from the Defenders all having apparently died in the last issue of that book, and ave all decided to retire as well. (While it makes sense that Warren would go off and do the playboy millionaire thing, and that Bobby would put his accounting degree to practice, it beggars belief that Henry, a former Avenger and holder of several doctorates, would have any difficulty getting a university position whatsoever, anti-mutant sentiment or no.) However, when Jean turns up alive, they all rush back to New York to throw in with Warren's utterly bonehead idea: use the swirling anti-mutant hysteria to pose as mutant hunters while secretly rescuing mutants to train them. They have no inkling that this could, in fact, make things SO MUCH WORSE. (It took a year or so for that idea to occur to the creative team as well.) The actual double-sized issue is okay but not awesome; Butch Guice's art is uneven (not helped by three inkers), and would get a lot better in a few issues, but Bob Layton's scripting is servicable, Copper Age Marvel at its core. (Again, the book would pick up tremendously in a few issues when Louise Simonson took over writing the book.)

[Dread]

Louise Simonson on X-Factor kind of defined a lot of my comics fandom.

[Dan]

Louise Simonson on X-Factor kind of defined a lot of my comics fandom.

Same here. I was probably 11 or 12 when I became aware of her writing on X-Factor, and she instantly became someone I would recognize as a quality writer whenever I saw her name. I don't understand how she never became a superstar. Respected as hell, absolutely, especially as an editor, and even more so within the industry (her ability to wrangle Chris Claremont and John Byrne alone is testament to that), but she should have been a fucking rock star.

[Venneh]

Sentinel (2002-03 and 06 runs): I like the 06 run better than the 03 run, as there's a kind of creepy borderline Columbine vibe to Juston's actions in the original. The 06 run looks at the wider consequences of what he's doing, and has way better art. Plus, the 06 gets more story in half as many issues. Also, good accurate portrayal of small town WI.

[Dan]

Getting to the end of my con haul. Marvel spent the 1970s throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. Most of it didn't.

The Cat #1-4 (1972) (also billed as The Claws of the Cat): In the early 1970s, Stan Lee thought that maybe Marvel should think about publishing a handful of titles that might actually appeal to female readers. Shanna the She-Devil and Night Nurse (sigh) were joined by this book, in which Chicago widow Greer Nelson is experimented upon and gets super strength and agility and super-female-intution or some shit. Written by Linda Fite, a Marvel staffer with a handful of backup features to her credit, the series (which was cancelled after four issues due to poor sales, to the extent that a completed fifth issue has never been published) is let down by the lack of a regular art team. The first two issues are penciled by Marie Severin, with Wally Wood inking the first beautifully. Issue three is by Bill Everett (with Paty Greer), and looks terrific, and the finale is courtesy of Jim Starlin and Alan Weiss. They all look great, with John Romita Sr. covers, but the lack of consistency is a problem. On top of which, the actual stories are okay but not awesome, even if issue #3 (in which she fights a pirate) contains the immortal line, "I have need of your stately pleasure dome!" After these four issues and an appearance in Marvel Team-Up, the Cat went away; Greer Nelson came back within two years as Tigra, and her costume was given to Patsy Walker, who went on to become Hellcat.

Also, with the obnoxious interviews he's giving today about women and the need for them to be more old-fashioned, this letter in issue #3 praising the strong central character legit made me laugh out loud tonight:

Black Goliath (1976) #1-5: I have a huge soft spot for Bill Foster. He'd been knocking around since 1966 as Tony Stark's technician and Henry Pym's lab assistant, and was just one of those faces who always seemed to be around. Tony Isabella and George Tuska gave him growth powers in Power Man in 1975, and a year later he got his own book. There's a certain amount of the same blaxploitation influence that permeated Power Man (not least of which being the character's name, which is awkward as fuck now, but was actually pretty in line with the same movies being riffed on - Black Caesar, Black Dynamite - although in short order it would be addressed during his extended appearances in Marvel Two-in-One, when the Thing essentially said "You know, if someone wants to know if you're black or not, they can probably figure it out without you needing to point it out directly", at which point he switched to Giant-Man), especially in the first issue (written by Isabella), but for the most part, this is a very straightforward Marvel superhero book where the main character's skin color is far from the most interesting thing about him. From issue #2 onwards, Chris Claremont takes over scripting duties. They're not bad, but not classic by any stretch (the fact that Claremont tends to be only as good as his artist/co-plotter is in evidence, as he's paired with Tuska for most of the run; a longtime staffer, Tuska epitomized "competent but not spectacular"... and Vince Coletta's inks certainly don't help him at all here), although the last issue sees Goliath and a couple of supporting cast members transported to an alien planet and doing space opera stuff, which is a far cry from the urban crime stories he'd seen up to this point and was pretty interesting. Oddly, his battle with the Atom Smasher in the first two issues had long standing repercussions for the character, as the atomic blasts he took wound up giving Bill radiation poisoning and then cancer, both of which followed him for decades and strenuously affected his ability and motivation to be a crimefighter. A fun series which didn't last long (and which ponted out something that sounds obvious in retrospect - if a fifteen-foot-tall guy is charging at you, you are going to freak the fuck out), and a good sampling for a really likable character whose strong friendship with Ben Grimm was one of the best things about later MTIO. Shame they felt the need to have him taken out by a fucking Thor clone in Civil War; he deserved way, way better.

[Molly]

Bill Foster is a fucking blast, and I'll fight anyone who disagrees.

[Koete]

Hey man, Barbara Stanwyck is great in Night Nurse.

[Dan]

Hey man, Barbara Stanwyck is great in Night Nurse.

Yeah, this is some quality stuff here.

You know, for girls.

[Dread]

"Stay away from that negro! Don't you know they're dangerous!"

[Dread]

Kiss Me, Satan! vol 1 New Orleans is a Werewolf Town-Fucking great. Gischler's ability to create a believable world of demons, werewolves, vampires and witches in New Orleans is breezy and does not hold your hand at all. Makes True Blood look like a children's book. The art is fucking fantastic. Juan Ferreyra is my new favorite artist. Amazing pastel colors too.

Sex Criminals vol 1: I have to admit, I didn't like it too much until the Sex Police showed up, then I was sold. It's a little too hipster for my liking, but I enjoy the art and some of the story. Characters need some work. Will I come back for vol 2? Maybe.

Doberman #1:This IDW book is pretty amazingly recreating the movies of the 80s. Doberman is very much an Axel Foley type. It is primed for a TV show or movie, but with 21 Jump Street and Brooklynn 99, I'm not sure it needs to happen. Fun read.

Hack/Slash: Son of Samhain #1: I liked it, but having read it two days ago, I don't remember a damned thing about it. Not a good sign.

Jack Kraken: a oneshot from Dark Horse featuring a character Tim Seeley created in middle school. Neat idea. Not good.

Lady Zorro #1: Very origin story-ish. Not great. Won't read more.

Night of the Living Dead: New York #1: Also not very good. I love a lot of Avatar's stuff, but the NOTLD cash-ins have been pretty terrible overall.

Quad #1: A four part series of post-apocalyptic stories. Not too bad. I love the art.

Ragnarok #1: Beautiful. I think this needs to be enjoyed as a trade paperback to get the whole story. There isn't a lot of story here. The lettering is done in a viking style so it is a little difficult to read. I will grab the trade based on Simonson alone, though.

Trades: 48

Comics: 626

Omnibus: 8

Graphic Novels: 15